A million displaced in Pakistan's war with Taliban

Pakistan's offensive against the Taliban has forced a million people to flee their homes, the United Nations said.

Pakistani paramilitary maintain a position on a high post in the troubled area of PakistanPhoto: PA

By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad

10:18PM BST 08 May 2009

Air strikes rocked Mingora, the main town in the Swat Valley, on Friday as the armed forces pressed ahead with the latest assault designed to clear the area of Taliban insurgents who have claimed swathes of the country in recent months.

Internally displaced children, fleeing military operations in Buner, try to get free food at a UNHCR camp

The latest assessment from the UN High Commission for refugees laid bare the scale of the fighting. The UN said that 200,000 civilians have already fled the Swat Valley and two neighbouring districts, while another 300,000 are either on the move or preparing to leave. Earlier offensives against the Taliban in other regions of the rugged North West Frontier Province near the Afghan border displaced another 500,000 people, bringing the total number displaced by the offensives to a million.

While many civilians have left their homes, thousands more are trapped by the fighting and vulnerable to being used as human shields by Taliban guerrillas.

The air force continued to bomb Taliban positions, killing an estimated 140 Taliban guerrillas in 24 hours, a day after the government ordered the armed forces to "eliminate terrorists". President Asif Ali Zardari, who is in America for an official visit, promised that military operations would last until "normalcy" had returned to Swat.

The army reported seven deaths but the civilian death toll remains unclear. Pakistan's army is not trained for anything less than high intensity warfare and there is no doubt that civilians will have been killed.

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Salman Khan, who lives in the town of Saidu Sharif, said that two children were killed and five wounded when two mortar bombs destroyed a house in his neighbourhood.

Desperate Swat residents appealed for a pause in the fighting to allow them to escape. Others said the Taliban were not allowing civilians to leave, perhaps aiming to use them as "human shields".

"We want to leave the city, but we cannot go out because of the fighting," said one resident, Hidayat Ullah. "We will be killed, our children will be killed, our women will be killed and these Taliban will escape. Kill terrorists, but don't harm us."

Many Pakistanis are bitterly opposed to offensives of this kind, believing their governed has been drafted into "America's war" against the Taliban. But there are some signs a change in the popular mood, at least in the areas directly affected by the fighting.

"If the government is serious in eliminating militants from Swat then we will support the military operation," said Khalid Khan, a social worker and resident of the Dheri Baba area.

"The public have seen their [the Taliban's] real face," said Major-General Athar Abbas, the army spokesman. "They realise their agenda goes much beyond Sharia courts. They have a design to expand."

But the Taliban are believed to be resisting fiercely. Even by the standards of Pakistani religious radicals, the Swat Valley's Taliban are considered to be hardline extremists. Despite the onset of the military offensive, a teacher said that Mingora was still under Taliban control.

The military operation will probably move in several phases. A preliminary bombardment from strike aircraft and heavy artillery is now underway, accompanied by raids on selected targets mounted by commandoes. The next stage may be an infantry assault designed to clear the area of Taliban fighters.

The danger, however, is that local civilians may be alienated, creating the conditions for the Taliban to return.